So, if you have been following along you’ll know that I had a bit of an epiphany on April Fools Day. I woke up and got up and got on the scales and weighed 124.5kg’s and had a bioelectrical impedance reading of 35.6% body fat on the Fitbit Aria 2 scales that I have at home. I thought to myself ‘fuck’. Then I had a few thoughts in no particular order 1. That is fat as fuck. 2. I recalled a recent conversation with another coach/trainer I used to work with a decade or more ago who asked, ‘Why are you living like this?’ He went on to point out that ‘normal’ people have an excuse to be a complete mess as they don’t know any better and then said,’You know what to do and you know how to do it’. 3. I have always had the self awareness to understand that I am very extrinsically motivated. When I was competing I trained not for the joy of training but because I was competitive and loved to compete. I trained as a means to an ends. 4. I am as old as fuck now and have accumulated a significant amount of physical damage over my lifetime and that I am closer to the end now than the beginning and that I needed to decide how I was going to physically meet that end.
So, I decided that morning I would change all of that and pretty much formulated the outline of the plan that I am currently executing in that moment.
Phase I – Ditching as huge amount of fat as possible and building a base level of aerobic fitness.
This was done through cyclic fasting with structured and planned re-feeds supported through the use of supplements and electrolytes.
There are a huge number of reasons I have always preferred fasting over calorie restriction. As always, I am happy to get into the weeds if people are interested and one of things I may or may not do is to makes some videos and or PoodCast on the topic with Paddy and Dan or just find other people that do a reasonably good job of explaining it either in detail or briefly and post those videos just to save the time and effort.
In short I fasted and re-fed at set intervals over the month of April and walk at least 45mins every day. That was it in a nutshell.
Phase II – This is the phase that I am in now. This will be about continuing to improve my body composition. Ongoing decrease of body fat and an improvement and preparation of my body, in particular my ligaments and tendons, for a return to resistance training.
This again is super simple and straight forward. It is just a 3 day program that will be repeated up and until I go on leave and head up to the farm for Phase III.
Day 1 – Walk to gym (25ish mins)
Vertical Pull – 15-20 reps
Horizontal Push – 15-20 reps
Hip Hinge – 15-20 reps
Done as a circuit with only as much rest as required for 5 circuits/sets.
Am currently on my 3rd run through the cycle and it has never taken me more than 30 mins from entering the gym to walking out the door.
Then walk home (25ish mins)
Like each of the days…my total investment of time in my health, fitness and wellbeing each day is 90mins at the absolute most.
Day 2 – Walk to gym (25ish mins)
Horizontal Pull – 15-20 reps
Vertical Push – 15-20 reps
Quad Dominant – 15-20 reps
Done as a circuit with only as much rest as required for 5 circuits/sets.
Walk to home (25ish mins)
Day 3 – Walk to gym (25ish mins)
A1. Core/Trunk – Something Linear
A2. Bicep – 15-20 reps
B1. Core/Trunk – Something Rotational
B2. Tricep – 15-20 reps
Then some bend prehab work for my shoulders.
For 5 circuits/sets.
Walk to home (25ish mins)
Day 1 and Day 2 are moderate intensity and on those days I am looking to get 150g of protein and 100g of carbs into me. This usually takes 2 large meals a day and I have been consuming them at 10ish and then at 2ish in the arvo. It actually takes some effort to hit those macros. It is a significant amount of food. The protein has been chicken, beef, fish and eggs and the carbs have been soba noodles and rice. I am flavouring it up and chucking in veg and salad etc and some tasty dressing. Have been unconcerned with the amount of fat.
After my last food intake on Day 2 I have been and will continue to fast through Day 3 up and until I am back to my first meal on Day 1. This give me a fasting window of around 4o hours or so. What I am doing Day 3 though is having a coffee, milk (150g), thickened cream (50g) and flax oil (1tsp) in the morning and then taking an electrolyte supplement in the arvo and drinking as much black tea and soda water as I like. I find fasting mentally and physically a breeze now so it is no bother at all.
Again, there is a lot of science behind what I am doing and I haven’t pulled it out of my arse.
Phase III – The focus of this phase will be on the improvement of my ‘fitness’. I will be up at the farm from the 6th of June until the 11th of July and during that time I am going to have a focus on improving my mobility and stability in the morning through calisthenics. Then in the afternoons I am going to get out onto the mountain bike and into the national park that borders the farm and ride…I plan to mix up the durations and intensities from high intensity shorter rides of around an hour to more moderate intensity rides of perhaps 2-3hours and really build up my cardiovascular work capacity.
In this phase I will look to create a net calorie deficit of no larger than 500cals a day of 3500 cals a week. I will be able to consume a lot more due to the increase in energy expenditure BUT at the end of Phase III I believe I will weigh around 97kg and at that weight I will have a body fat reading of less than 20%.
Phase IV – This will see me return to Melbourne and return to work. It will see me return to my pattern of walking to the gym. My gym session will become around 45min (I will move to an IP template) and a walk home.
I will need to come up with a new goal and focus for this phase. At the moment I am thinking about getting my body fat down to between 12-15% for no other reason than to show that I understand exactly how to do it by optimising my training and nutrition.
Other news
What has also happened since I commenced this little project is that I have been ‘coaching/helping’ more people on their own journey as no one has not noticed my rapid improvement in body composition and that has meant that people have been asking questions and I have been happily answering questions and giving guidance. I always loved coaching, talking about training practice and theory as well as writing about it and I feel like I am enjoying it again even more now a decade later as I don’t have to rely on it to pay my bills.
To that end I might try to get back to some sort of structure. In all likelihood I will base it here.
I am thinking that maybe what I might do is just keep an actual training log (here is as good as anywhere) and some thoughts and notes in the form of a weekly summary and post it on a Saturday night (mentally I like a Sunday to Saturday schedule…don’t ask me why) at the completion of a training week.
I also miss having a ‘forum’ for want of a better word or alternative to waste time on arguing or discussing training etc. A while a go we were using Slack and we had a look at Mattermost and I am sure there have been some new entrants into the market since then. I might investigate to see if WordPress have a plugin or app that can be integrated into this website. If anyone of the 5 of you that will probably be reading this feel free to drop me a line and let me know if you have any ideas?
Will Heffernan 